be more than compensated by the pure gold that must result from this spiritual alchemy.
At DeWitt Clinton High School, EVM entered “a new world” of intellectual and political challenge. The school, then located in central Manhattan, attracted academically inclined boys from across the city. The faculty was largely gentile, but the students were increasingly Jewish. “I saw the youth of the East Side,” EVM recalled, “more ambitious than I was, even lower in the financial scale than poor me, coming joyously to study, seemingly marvelously equipped to absorb, digest and retain.” Most had to work after school but despite their hardships, they seemed contented. “There was no difficulty in their minds concerning their birthright, nor how they stood in relation to the world at large.” He envied them their “nonchalance.”
Politics at DeWitt Clinton was “overrun by Jewish students” who “grasped every office and gained every honor hungrily, scrambling for more.” It was here that EVM says he first heard the word goy used derisively; he berated the classmates who used it for their intolerance and “lack of Americanism.” He decided to act on his “assimilationist” views. In his first year, he backed the Protestant candidate for class president, in the interest of “forgetting petty nationalistic impulses and being thoroughly Americanized.” The election resulted in a tie, whereupon EVM’s candidate gracefully declined in favor of the Jewish candidate. Not for the last time in his political career, EVM found himself hoist with his own petard.
In his second year, he decided to attend school on Rosh Hashanah because, given his lack of religious convictions, “it would be hypocritical of me not to.” Strangely, however, he felt uncomfortable, the object of others’ “silent disdain.” When Yom Kippur came around, he stayed at home. Reporting to class the following day, he was reprimanded by his teacher: “My name required that I be present, and either her near-sightedness or her general stupidity did not prove to her my right to stay at home.” When EVM informed her he was Jewish, she told him he was lying and sent him to the principal, a man named Dr Francis Paul who did more than any other to shape the school’s reputation (Paul Avenue in the Bronx, where the school is currently located, is named after him). When the fifteen-year-old EVM—in high dudgeon—explained the teacher’s error, Dr Paul was amused. The episode proved “the foundation for a long and intimate acquaintanceship.” Paul himself had chosen to leave the Catholic school system out of a commitment to secular education. He encouraged EVM to pursue his radical ideas—although he himself strongly disagreed with them.
In 1916, EVM attended a pro-Irish street rally in Manhattan: years later he recalled “thousands of people of all nationalities, addressed by Irish men and women . . . the speeches were for liberty—for tolerance—for an Irish homeland!” A year later the US entered World War I—simultaneously with the launch of the country’s first anti-red scare. “In 1917 many of my best teachers were subjected to a red-baiting investigation,” EVM later recalled, “all the result of war hysteria.” At DeWitt Clinton, EVM would have been exposed to arguments among pacifists, patriots, pro- and anti-German and pro- and anti-British voices. When the US entered the war, EVM took the lead in raising the funds to purchase a DeWitt Clinton High School ambulance to send to the front in Europe. He then enlisted, determined to drive the ambulance himself, though at the time he was still some months short of his eighteenth birthday, and under the minimum legal age for service.
In later years EVM proudly declared himself—especially on his campaign literature—a “veteran of World War One” and always boasted of his membership in the Jewish War Veterans, though he never spared its leadership the benefits of his criticism. The story we heard was that when his concealment of his real age (an expression of his patriotic zeal) was discovered, he was sent home, but immediately re-enlisted (legally) and was about to be shipped off to France when the war ended. “The Kaiser heard I was coming so he surrendered,” he used to tell my mother.
But the papers in the leather case hint at a more complicated, enigmatic tale. In “This Assimilation Business” EVM explains that when he first enlisted in the ambulance corps he found himself the only Jew in the outfit. “It would take volumes to cover my two months’ experience in this company,” he writes. “Let it suffice to say that I arranged for a transfer because of anti-semitic feeling.” When he re-enlisted—in the signal corps—he was posted to a battalion of six hundred, of whom twelve were Jews.
I had a dispute with the top sergeant and managed to get him alone in the barracks. I voiced my disapproval of the manner in which the Jewish boys were treated, especially concerning holiday leaves. He was very frank about the situation. He said to me that he was a member of the United Christian Brethren. That he honestly and firmly believed that the only salvation that existed was that every man in his outfit, should he unfortunately be killed, would at least, as he put it, “die a Good Christian.” I retorted very bluntly that the only thing I was certain about in this war was that the twelve Jews in this outfit would die as Jews.
On his discharge from the army in January 1919, EVM was required to return to DeWitt Clinton for a full year to complete the studies he had abandoned when he enlisted. Finally, in 1920, he received his diploma from Dr Paul, to whom he then wrote a lengthy, pained and accusatory letter in which his military experiences appear in a more candid—and confused—light. Clearly, there had been an angry rupture between the principal and the headstrong pupil, and it had something to do with the war. “Whatever there is that we could actually hold each other accountable for, at least I owe you my sincere thanks for your kindness in giving me my diploma,” he writes, then adds bitterly that he did resent “sitting idly in class a full year just to make up time.” Even as he offers the hand of reconciliation, he insists, “My views have not changed . . . I believed in independence of thought and action. Every concession that I have made, every new angle of thought, was of my own desire. I never could be browbeat into accepting dogma or creeds.” There follows what is probably the most candid account of his time in the army and his attempt to escape from it:
I won’t attempt to justify my war record. Let it suffice that after making a mistake of judgement and not conscience I re-enlisted, not that my ideas had changed but I felt that I owed it to my future to go through with the thing according to schedule. That was a hard thing to do. I had no love for the army, in fact I detested it. The army is a man’s game, and I was a boy . . . My ambulance company was anti-semitic, so much so that I sacrificed my reputation, your friendship and a whole lot besides to get out. To stay in meant a living hell. Once out, I appreciated my situation. Who in the frenzy of war hysteria would have believed my story? So I went back . . . There is much that has not been told. Some day, God granting, I shall try and tell it . . . Remember, petted and pampered as I was, a leader in my school, it was hard to be yelled at and to clean pots. Of course there were a million others like myself . . . Your opinions are your own, so shall mine ever be. Really, should I have suffered for mine? I said I would not talk war, but I have.
Did EVM use his under-age enlistment to get himself out of the army after those two bitter weeks in the ambulance corps? Initially, he was not given an honorable discharge; only in 1925 did Congress pass an act granting honorable discharges to those who’d concealed their minority status at enlistment, thus enabling EVM to boast later that he was “the proud possessor of two honorable discharges from the same war.” What seems clear is that his precipitate return to New York—along with the bitter opinions about the war and the army he seems to have expressed at the time—profoundly displeased Dr Paul (who for his part must have known of EVM’s under-age enlistment from the start). “I prided myself on your friendship. There is much I resent . . . some of the things you stand for and some of your views are still unalterably not to my liking. I admit my radical tendencies have become less red. I still maintain my right to be called a real American.” He ends the letter expressing confidence that he is now on “firmer ground” and that the future holds much for him.
I intend to go into politics. I want to try and shape the destiny of this land as much as any one man can, and I hope to succeed. I want a place in the sun. You see, I have not changed, I still have the ego. But that is a necessity if
